Volume 15: Low Carbon Cities and Urban Energy Systems: Part IV

NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF THE INFLUENCE OF GAS CHANNEL SIZE ON THE PERFORMANCE OF THERMOELECTRIC GENERATOR Yanzhe Li, Shixue Wang

Abstract

Thermoelectric generator (TEG) technology has considerable potential in the recovery and utilization of waste heat of automobile exhaust. This paper simulated the thermoelectric generator by using the automobile exhaust waste heat in numerical simulation method. The numerical calculation shows that the total open voltage of the thermoelectric modules increases with the wall thickness increases when the length of exhaust gas channel is same as the length of all one-side thermoelectric modules. When the length of the exhaust gas channel increases, the open circuit voltage of the thermoelectric modules on the channel first decreases and then increases along the air inlet direction, and the total open circuit voltage of the thermoelectric modules also increases with the increase of the wall thickness of the exhaust gas channel.

Keywords automobile exhaust; thermoelectric generator; thermoelectric module; exhaust gas channel.